The author of this book, a distinguished psychiatrist and a member of the American Psycho-analytic Society, being in Europe, paid a first visit to Russia to investigate the work that especially interested him—mental hygiene. He found unexpectedly so much that was novel, and the preventive work so fascinating and valuable, that he has made several visits to study the new methods and results. Dr. Williams explains that he was 'inclined towards some sort of "liberalism." Extremist radicals I have always looked upon as rather wild, "half-crazy, " neurotic or at least seriously maladjusted people suitable rather for a psycho-analytic clinic than jail.'

For mental hygiene in Russia he found no special department for treatment or prophylaxis; it was the Soviet system that was effecting the cure, and preventing mental illness so efficiently that the director of the Scientific Institute for Neuro-Psychiatric Prophylaxis in Moscow had vainly searched during three months for a new case of manic-depressive